LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
Not thoughtless let us enter thy domain;
Well did the tribes of yore,
Who sought the ocean from the distant plain,
Call thee their country's door.[1]
And as the portals of a saintly pile
The wanderer's steps delay,
And, while he musing roams the lofty aisle,
Care's phantoms melt away
In the vast realm where tender memories brood
O'er sacred haunts of time,
That woo his spirit to a nobler mood
And more benignant clime,—
So in the fane of thy majestic hills
We meekly stand elate;
The baffled heart a tranquil rapture fills
Beside thy crystal gate:
For here the incense of the cloistered pines,
Stained windows of the sky,
The frescoed clouds and mountains' purple shrines,
Proclaim God's temple nigh.
Through wild ravines thy wayward currents glide,
Round bosky islands play;
Here tufted headlands meet the lucent tide,
There gleams the spacious bay;
Untracked for ages, save when crouching flew,
Through forest-hung defiles,
The dusky savage in his frail canoe,
To seek the thousand isles,
Or rally to the fragrant cedar's shade
The settler's crafty foe,
With toilsome march and midnight ambuscade
To lay his dwelling low.
Along the far horizon's opal wall
The dark blue summits rise,
And o'er them rifts of misty sunshine fall,
Or golden vapor lies.
And over all tradition's gracious spell
A fond allurement weaves;
- ↑ One of the aboriginal names of Lake Champlain signifies the open door of the country.
